1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to information handling systems and more particularly to hold and preservation operations on objects stored within a content addressable storage archive system.
2. Description of the Related Art
As the value and use of information continues to increase, individuals and businesses seek additional ways to process and store information. One option available to users is information handling systems. An information handling system generally processes, compiles, stores, and/or communicates information or data for business, personal, or other purposes thereby allowing users to take advantage of the value of the information. Because technology and information handling needs and requirements vary between different users or applications, information handling systems may also vary regarding what information is handled, how the information is handled, how much information is processed, stored, or communicated, and how quickly and efficiently the information may be processed, stored, or communicated. The variations in information handling systems allow for information handling systems to be general or configured for a specific user or specific use such as financial transaction processing, airline reservations, enterprise data storage, or global communications. In addition, information handling systems may include a variety of hardware and software components that may be configured to process, store, and communicate information and may include one or more computer systems, data storage systems, and networking systems.
A known data storage system is a content-addressable storage (CAS) archive system. Known CAS systems store information that can be retrieved based on its content or based on a unique association identified with the content, not its storage location. Such a CAS system is often used for storage and retrieval of fixed content, such as documents stored for compliance with government regulations. One issue for CAS systems relates to compliance requirements that may be associated with certain types of data that are stored on the CAS systems. For example, information associated with litigation and corporate audits are often governed by certain regulatory and compliance requirements. Specific storage system features and behaviors are expected to be applied to this information to meet the compliance requirements applied to these types of information.
One example of these requirements is when a compliance application demands or requests a hold operation on the information that is stored in a storage pool such as the archiving system. When objects are in a hold state, the objects cannot be altered or deleted. Applications locate relevant information that should be included in the hold operation and prevent the information from being modified, deleted, or tampered. Often such solutions either perform a copy operation on the original data and hold the new copy or protect the content and metadata associated with the information via one or more file locking schemes. The process of copying this information set can be an expensive business operation requiring additional storage/data centers as well as infrastructure and time. Post hold operations may also be expensive because these operations often require delete and reallocation operations be applied to the previously held information.